


All's Well That Ends Well (To End Up With You)

by losingmymindtonight



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amputee Tony Stark, Because I'm in denial, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Crying, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Light Angst, Loss of Limbs, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Platonic Cuddling, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Lives, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, dw Peter gives him one, my babies are together again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 12:49:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20291734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losingmymindtonight/pseuds/losingmymindtonight
Summary: And, yes, this wasn’t the first time that he’d seen Peter since he’d come back, but it was... it wasdifferentnow. This wasn’t a memory, it wasn’t clutching frantically at the cool metal of the Iron Spider suit as death spilled out around them. It certainly wasn’t covered by an end-of-life blur, wasn’t permeated by the frustration of trying to say goodbye without words.No, this was just... this was justPeter: hair messy, wrapped in an oversized Midtown sweatshirt, warm and breathing and solid. Not dust, not ash, not bloodied and afraid.Just Peter. His Peter.--Or, the irondad hospital reunion scene we deserved.





	All's Well That Ends Well (To End Up With You)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in my notes app in a single day, between moving furniture and a dozen other weekend chores, because this scene just wouldn't leave me alone. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labors.
> 
> WARNINGS: hospitals, discussions of grief (not graphic, but it's there), loss of an arm

After Bruce Snaps, Tony’s memories of Peter go like this:

First, it’s just the thought of him. The soft, afterglow realization that somewhere, Peter Parker is breathing. He is _ alive _ . Five long years of living in limbo slosh away like sand-grooves in waves. Peter Parker is _ alive _ . He‘s alive, and Tony‘s going to find him, cradle him, love him without flinching because _ that’s _ the regret that’s followed him: the regret that he’d loved the kid in margins.

Then there is the pulse-explosion of relief he feels when the kid steps through that portal, strong and tall and proud. Tony knows that Peter is not the only hero back from the dead. There are others having similar homecomings all around him. Strange has just begun stitching up thousands of wounds, reuniting dozens of splintered families, and yet Tony only has eyes for one kid. For Peter.

They have a half-breath of eye contact before the battle tears them apart, as brief as the dregs of a sunset but just a vivid, just as bright. All it takes is that single moment for Tony’s universe to realign.

What must only be minutes but what feels like hours later, Peter is saving his life, bounding up with life in every inch of him, face dirty but eyes so blessedly, so beautifully alight. Tony hears him ramble but doesn’t pay any real attention to his words, just drinks in the sound of his voice in person because it had been _ five years _. Five years of grainy voicemails and suit logs. Five years of trying to memorialize the voice of a long-dead child. 

And then he’s hugging him, holding him close, everything blurry with adrenaline and ash and smoke, but still good. Still precious. Still a memory to cling to as the battle wears on.

He thinks of Peter when the Infinity Stones send power surging up his arm, into his soul. He thinks of Peter’s face, of Morgan’s face, and then he Snaps.

Despite the agony that comes after, he is grateful that the Stones didn’t kill him instantly. That his painfully human body clings to life just _ a little bit _ longer. Even though he can’t speak past the death clogging up his throat, he thinks of Peter as he lays in the rubble, broken and shattered in ways that no man ever ought to be. Peter is sobbing just inches away, all child and pre-grief and fear. If Tony could only move, if his arms would only connect to his brain, he could hold him again. He could wipe the blood off of his face, catch his tears on his thumb, like he’d learned to do with Morgan.

The darkness creeps up, and he’s thinking about his family, about Peter, even as the strength for thought escapes him.

He doesn’t think anything for a long time after that.

And then he’s floating. Dancing somewhere between awake and asleep, comfortable and warm and content and, surprisingly, _ alive _.

He thinks of many things, then, because thinking is all he has to do. He thinks of Pepper, when he can feel her hand on his face, hear her voice pouring over him. He thinks of Morgan, when he realizes that an over-small weight is curled against his ribs. He thinks of Happy, and Rhodey, and a dozen others: a large cast of characters, rotating slowly in and out of his perception.

And, of course, he thinks of Peter.

Peter is like Pepper: almost always there. The others come and go. Even Morgan, and for that he is both broken and grateful, because while being without her is like being without a piece of himself, he also understands that this is a hospital vigil and no four-year-old should ever have to face that. 

Pepper sits on his right, Peter on his left. Listening to them discuss that arrangement is one of the few times he gets to hear Peter’s voice, while he’s stranded in the in-between.

_ “Peter, honey, come sit on this side.” _

_ “I... I don’t wanna make you...” _

_ “It’s alright. I don’t mind. Here, you can hold his hand if you sit over here. Let him know that you’re with him.” _

After that, Peter very rarely speaks, but he’s constantly clutching at his hand. At one point, he can feel the kid’s face pressed up against his knuckles, breaths slow, obviously asleep.

Tony sleeps with him.

When he wakes up, his eyes open.

Peter is gone, and the room is dark. It’s only him, Pepper, and his heart monitor, pressing signs of his continued existence into the world like an emergency signal.

“Pep?” He rasps, and she looks up from her phone with a startled breath.

“Tony,” she says, and then she’s crying, reaching up for his face, dragging her thumbs over his cheeks. “Tony, honey, you’re awake.”

“That I am.” He glances around the room, confirming that they’re alone. “Where’re the kids?”

The kids. Plural. He has _ kids _, now. Two of them. Two little humans that are under his protection. To little humans to keep safe.

“Happy took Morgan home to rest, and Peter’s with May, just a room over. She thought he needed a break.”

He nods. He’s avoiding the elephant in the room, and he can see that Pepper can see him doing it. It’s easier, he thinks, to look away. To pretend that sacrifice didn’t always mean, well, _ loss _. 

He swallows. “It’s, uh, it’s gone, isn’t it?”

She knows what he means. There’s a flicker of sadness across her face, and then she inclines her head, just a little, not enough to break their eye contact, but enough to convey. Enough for him to know.

He was pretty sure he’d known before, when he’d half-surfaced, hazy and lost in pain meds and delayed shock and god-knows-what-else. He’d known when he’d overheard Pepper murmur _ you can hold his hand if you sit over here. _

His hand. Singular. He has _ a _ hand, now. Just one of them.

He’d traded a hand for a kid. Despite the fear, the loss, the strange, indescribable lack of sensation in the space where his right arm was meant to be, there wasn’t an ounce of regret. He could build himself a new arm. He couldn’t build himself another Peter.

He cracks a smile, because that’s what he does. That’s what he’s _ always _ done. Smile through the losses, grin through the pain. “Well, guess that’s probably not an FDA approved weight loss plan, huh?”

She laughs. It’s abrupt and harsh, but it’s a laugh, and Tony’s so very in love with her.

“You’re incorrigible, did you know that?”

“I did, actually. I think you’ve told me before.”

“Oh, I’m sure I have, but now I’m telling you again.”

“I’ll make a mental note.”

“You’d better.” 

Pepper studies him for a moment as the banter fades out, and he tries not to think about what he looks like. He can feel the tenderness on the right side of his face, can remember how the blood and charred skin had blinded him on the battlefield. He’s genuinely surprised that he can even see out of that eye.

“Do you want me to get him?” She asks.

She doesn’t need to clarify which _ him _ she’s talking about. Why would she? She’s a mother now, too. She understands the longing in his chest.

It was funny, that he’d stumbled his way into parenthood before her. Who would’ve ever guessed that?

“Please.”

“Alright.” It looks like it physically hurts her to pull away, but she does it, and god, hasn’t he been forcing her to do that since the beginning? Pull away, watch him crumble in an event horizon? “I’ll be right back, okay? Hit the call button if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

He spares a glance to his right shoulder while she’s gone. He thinks he does a remarkable job of swallowing back the bile that rises when he sees nothing but bandage and negative space.

When Peter walks in, Tony kind of feels like an invisible force had taken a baseball bat to his chest.

And, yes, this wasn’t the first time that he’d seen Peter since he’d come back, but it was... it was _ different _ now. This wasn’t a memory, it wasn’t clutching frantically at the cool metal of the Iron Spider suit as death spilled out around them. It certainly wasn’t covered by an end-of-life blur, wasn’t permeated by the frustration of trying to say goodbye without words.

No, this was just... this was just _ Peter _: hair messy, wrapped in an oversized Midtown sweatshirt, warm and breathing and solid. Not dust, not ash, not bloodied and afraid.

Just Peter. His Peter.

“Pete,” he gasps, and the words come out wet. He knows that there is no hope of making it through these next few minutes without bawling, but that’s alright.

He’d cried when he’d held Morgan for the first time, too. And what was this moment if not a rebirth?

“Pete, c’mere.”

The moment that Peter’s close enough, he’s reaching out, placing his palm (his _ one _ palm, his _ only _ palm) against his face, running the pad of his thumb over the kid’s brow, and Peter’s eyes close. He takes a ragged breath, face screwing up under Tony’s touch.

“Shh,” he soothes, not really thinking about the fact that he’s only ever shushed Morgan like that, that he’d certainly _ never _ shushed Peter. “Shh, shh. It’s alright now. Everything’s alright now. You’re safe.”

_ I’m not going to let anything happen to you, _ he used to coo over Morgan’s crib, heart in his mouth, _ Dad’s here, you’re safe. _

“Your arm,” Peter breathes, eyes still closed, a child hiding underneath their covers because if they can’t see the monster, can’t see the bandages covering Tony’s empty shoulder, it isn’t real. The scary thing isn’t real. “It’s... It’s...”

“It’s fixable.”

For a second, it looks like Peter’s going to argue with him. Then, he just nods, slow and subtle, careful not to dislodge Tony’s grip on his face. “Yeah. Yeah. We can... They make prosthetics.”

“_ We’re _ making a prosthetic,” he murmurs, tapping Peter cheek until he blinks his eyes back open, until he finally looks at him. “You and me, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The kid smiles while he says it, and for some reason, that breaks him.

He’d been clinging to his composure reasonably well, he thought, but of course it wouldn’t last. Was there even a way to navigate this kind of moment with any sort of grace? This child had been _ dead _ a week ago. He hadn’t been around to do _ anything _ , let alone _ smile _, all braces-straightened teeth and not-quite-outgrown baby face. 

How the hell was he supposed to rationalize that?

He had been willing to die for that smile. Nat _ had _ died for that smile.

It’s surprisingly difficult to pull someone in for a hug when you’ve only got a single arm to work with, but Peter, bless him, picks up on the signal after only a few seconds of Tony palming uselessly at the back of his neck. He seems a little tentative to climb into the hospital bed until Pepper pushes him forward. Tony spares her a glance, and she looks a little tearful herself. He notices that she turns away as soon as Peter’s tucked safely against his side, giving them privacy, as if he’s ever had anything to hide from her.

He turns his face into the kid’s hair. Somehow, he’d managed to forget that Peter was only an inch or two shorter than him. A full-fledged adult, at least in height. Time and Morgan had skewed his perception. In all his memories, it seemed like Peter was staring up at him through miles and miles of space. So endlessly delicate. So endlessly small.

“I remembered you being smaller,” he chokes out.

Peter laughs against him. “You’re just short.”

“No,” he whispers, and _ god _ he feels dumb. He wishes he could joke with the kid, but it’s just... it’s too much. He’s too overwhelmed. “No. You’re... You’re supposed to be _ smaller _.”

_ You’re easier to protect if you’re tiny. And, god, all I want to do is protect you. _

“I’m sorry,” Peter mutters, clearly confused but still trying to please. Still reaching out.

“No, little one.” He understands the irony of the nickname, and it makes Peter tense in surprise. It’s what he calls Morgan, in moments of intensity, and somehow it just slips out. “It’s not... _ I’m _ sorry.”

And then he’s crying.

He’s not sure if it’s relief or guilt of some stomach-churning mix of both, but it all pours out. Peter tries to talk to him at first, but all he can do is shake his head and clutch weakly at the back of his shirt, so eventually the kid just sinks into his chest, holding Tony back and letting him sob.

He’s crying for more than just Peter, although that was certainly the catalyst. He’s crying for Morgan, and Pepper, and those five years that felt so much like voids. He’s crying for the fact that he’d almost died, for the fact that he’d been _ prepared _ to die.

Somewhere in there, he’s pretty sure that he even cries for his mom.

“Peter. _ Peter _,” he gasps, breathless but certain. He tilts the kid’s chin up, chokes air in past the bowling ball in his throat, because he knows there are things he has to say. Things he’s learned to say now, but things he’d never said enough, before. “I... Buddy, I just... I...”

“Don’t worry, Mister Stark.” Peter’s face is tilted, eyes sparkling. “I already know. You don’t have to say it.”

“No,” he murmurs, shaking his head. He _ does _ have to say it. He _ does _ . “No, Pete, I... I missed you so much. You were... You were _ so _ missed. And... and I just...”

Peter gazes up at him, smile soft, endlessly patient.

He’d said _ I love you _ to Morgan over and over again. He isn’t afraid of the words anymore. He isn’t even afraid of what they mean. He isn’t struggling because he doesn’t mean it, because he‘s too frightened to put the feelings into speech. It‘s more... the trepidation you sometimes feel before doing something monumental. He was promising Peter something, by saying it. Putting a lock on a concept that had been growing and growing ever since he’d dragged the kid off to Germany.

He forces himself to relax. Lets memory and emotion drag him over and past his anxiety’s threshold. There was no point standing still. Dwelling in that space had gotten him nowhere before Thanos. Why should it be any different after?

“I just...” He smiles, lopsided and goofy and, yeah, he‘s definitely still pumped full of pain meds, but that doesn’t make any of his feelings any less real, any less true. “I love you, Peter.”

Peter’s nose scrunches up. Despite his earlier reassurance, the admission lands on the kid’s face like sunshine. 

“Same,” he whispers back.

The simplicity of the response jolts a laugh out of him. “You’re... You are _ such _ a brat.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but the gesture is more concession than sass. “I love you too, Mister Stark. And I missed you.” His voice drops a little lower. “And... And I’m really glad you’re alright. You scared me.”

He resists the urge to pull Peter even closer to his chest, to curl around him and shield him. It feels so easy to shelter Morgan, on the good days. She’s so young, has seen so little of the world. She doesn’t understand cruelty or entropy or the million other things that batter and bruise, but these are things that Peter knows all too well.

Peter understands that, sometimes, when heroes fall, they don’t get back up again.

“I’m sorry.” He runs his hand over Peter’s face, down his back. “I’ll try not to do it again, okay?”

Pepper steps closer, into his line of sight. Tony’s a little embarrassed to admit it, but he’d forgotten that she was there. Though for him, that was less of a slight than a testament to his trust in her. He very rarely let down his guard.

“Do you want me to call Happy? Have him bring Morgan?”

He smiles at the thought. Both his kids, in one room. Under one roof. God, that would be... he couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than that. He could take care of both of them, that way. Look after them. Keep them safe.

He nudges the crown of Peter’s head with his chin. “Have you met her yet, Pete?”

The kid’s buried his face into Tony’s chest, so he hears rather than sees his smile. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kisses his hair without really thinking it through, and Peter nuzzles closer in response.

“And?”

“She’s amazing,” is all the kid says, in a voice that’s so reverent that it brings tears back to Tony’s eyes, because it’s all he’s ever wanted to hear from Peter.

How long had it been since Afghanistan? Since he’d first donned the armor that he’d thought would define his life?

He’d been so sure, back then, that Iron Man would be the only worthwhile thing he’d ever be able to offer the world. He’d had no idea that he had so, so much more to give.

Peter and Morgan: they were what he left behind. His legacy. The suit could be damned, for all he cared. It was nothing compared to the two lives that he’d found himself responsible for. It was _ nothing _ compared to what he knew those lives would lead to, the things that these children would create.

The past five years had hurt. Hell, his _ whole life _ had hurt. And while he wasn’t sure that he’d ever be ready to write the universe a thank you letter, he could take this happiness, this chest-deep fulfillment, for what it was: a chance.

He had one arm, but he had _ two _ kids.

There had never been a fairer trade.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, and yes, the title is a Taylor Swift lyric. C'mon, my girl has a new album coming out on Friday and y'all didn't expect me to give her a lil free promo?


End file.
